Humanity, it's a Fragile Thing
by icecreamlova
Summary: The motel rose abruptly out in the middle of Nowhere, Earth, like a sore thumb. One that screamed, Want to get stabbed in the middle of night? We are here to help! A Sasuke/Sakura vampire AU, mixed genre.
1. Chapter 1

_T__his was written for sasusaku_month on livejournal, with theme: Alternate universe & prompt: burning/ignite. Originally just one chapter, split due to length. A little rough because I wanted to get it out before the sasusaku_month deadline, so I'll probably go over it again later._

_Warnings: medium violence, __spoilery warnings at the bottom. Believe it or not, writing this way (both the style and the idea) is completely new to me, so feedback would be appreciated._

* * *

><p><strong>Humanity, it's a Fragile Thing<strong>  
><em>By icecreamlova<em>  
><span>Part One<span>

- : -

_Here it comes it's all blowing in tonight_

_Burning on the bridge, turning off the lights_

_Here on the run I can see it in your eyes_

**- ****Mat Kearney, **_**All I Need**_

- : -

Sasuke wanted to keep driving late into the night, until they reached what used to be the state border, but Sakura put her foot down when they'd passed the third town two hours back and showed no signs of stopping. She wasn't very familiar with the territory - wide, expansive plains of grass, where the sky still had something of a hint of blue, the sun was more than a bright spot in a sea of grey, and she could almost imagine that the world wasn't going to hell - but she did know that she didn't want to stop at those motels that rose abruptly out in the middle of Nowhere, Earth, like a sore thumb that screamed 'Want to get stabbed in the middle of night? We are here to help!'

"No," Sasuke said.

"Unlike you, and like most human beings," Sakura said, "I need to sleep. And drink. And use the bathroom. Bladder bursting is a real phenomenon, you know. You have no idea how messy it is to clean up, in a hospital. Now, in a car-"

Sasuke's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. The sky was growing indigo-dark (and Sakura still hadn't grown used to the conspicuous absence of hazy yellow lights on the sides of the road) but Sakura could imagine the cold, remote expression on his face as he said, "We can stop briefly for that."

Sakura leaned idly against the window, the vibrations from a short stretch of gravel making her head buzz and teeth rattle. "You are disgusting."

"We don't have time for this," said Sasuke, exasperated enough to sound it.

"Rubbish," Sakura retorted, watching as the crescent moon slipped fully beyond the horizon. "You just want more revenge. Like it's going to make you happier than the last time you went after it." Under its cold light, twisted hunks of rusty metal - normally concealed in daylight by the unending waves of prairie grass - gleamed like the silver in the pack squatting on the worn back seat. As short as the structures looked from a distance, they seemed to loom with ghosts - jagged fingers of metal clawing at the stars, like a last attempt to tear down the aerial strikes that had turned them from buildings into skeletons.

She shuddered, and tore her eyes away, just in time to meet Sasuke's as his gaze flicked to hers. She could just make out the thin gash of his mouth, edges turned downwards. The scarlet bleeding into his irises was very apparent, emerging from the deep shadows, and they were not friendly.

"Fine," she said. "Whatever. We're still stopping. Look. There." She gestured, as though it were a necessity to point out the only point of light on the horizon that wasn't three hundred thousand kilometres away and shaped like a banana. "Either that, or you're going to meet your opponent sleep-deprived enough for an ambush. I'm not using my skills to keep you awake and alert."

Sasuke didn't reply, but just as she was about to raise her voice again, the car began slowing down. (And not because of lack of fuel either, which had been one of her nightmares when Sasuke told her he had planned absolutely nothing about his trip except "kill Madara.") With barely a bump, Sasuke left the road for the stretch of bare dirt twenty or so metres from the block of buildings, pulling up in a gap between two of the four cars already parked there.

If Sakura were the sort to look a gift horse in the mouth, she would have chosen any sort of motel but this. Three square-shaped blocks of rooms, two doors to a block, crouched ten or so metres from a slightly larger, similar one-storey building that looked like reception. From a distance, they looked like off-white cubes poking out of the grass. They were all sharp edges and right angles, flat roofs, white-washed but otherwise undecorated, as though the builders had abandoned their job in disgust once they'd seen the preliminary results. The light from reception was unexpectedly sharp after driving in the dark, but if she squinted, she could see a desk, and a flash of movement.

There was a battered sign a hundred or so metres away that was illegible under the moonlight, but Sakura was certain it had one of the cheesy-creepy Welcome messages on it.

Sakura was not, in fact, the sort to complain about getting what she wanted, but she still felt for the knives tucked at her belt and ankles, and said, "Stabbed in the middle of the night."

She was wrong only because the vampires lodging there favoured their teeth over using knives.

- : -

The receptionist was one of those bland, bored sorts with a face in danger of being forgotten within two minutes of terminating the conversation. Sasuke and Sakura took five minutes to enter after they'd actually stopped - three minutes to check their packs and the equipment in Sakura's, and the other two arguing over who and how they'd pay. As Sasuke put it, neither of them had the receptionist's gift of being forgotten, and the effects of being tracked swung between being a nuisance and a danger. In the end, Sakura let him pay by cash, reminding herself that he had, in fact, stopped for the night.

She hummed idly as she waited, shifting the straps cutting into her shoulder and rubbing her arms. (Sasuke's bag wasn't nearly as heavy: he could create fire all by himself, and didn't need the heavy instrument she carried.) A chill had settled in, one she hadn't noticed in the car, in Sasuke's close proximity - specifically, in close proximity to his ability to generate heat, an offshoot of the fire affinity his dead family had made famous. Sakura was dressed in old jeans, a scarlet jacket sporting a white circle on its back, and a T-shirt that begged, "Ask me what knockout means." It had been fine for the sheltered depths of the city where Leaf was located; it wasn't nearly enough to hide her against the wind, which tore away her body heat with the same enthusiasm with which it scattered her tuneless notes.

The jiggle of the bell made her look back and sigh in relief. "About time."

Sasuke's glare might have raised the hairs at the back of her exposed neck. The corners of Sakura's mouth lifted as she followed him to the block of rooms farthest from the road, deep in the shadow of its neighbour.

Except it wasn't Sasuke's glare that was making her breath stutter and hiss, or her skin prickle. It was the tingling in the air that any chakra-user worth his or her salt learned to identify.

Movement flickered in the corner of her eye. She lifted her eyes from Sasuke's back just in time to see the stiff, white-backed curtains in the middle house shuffle. The flash of a pale face, or maybe it was a hand, as the slit of soft light between the two halves disappeared. Her hand clenched around her pack's straps. Her muscles were tense enough that she could tear a ligament if she wasn't careful, and she could not recall when she had stiffened.

"Sasuke," she breathed, but did not say more.

He nodded, minutely. Sakura was not always able to read his expressions in dim light, but she would know his minute postures, his gestures, even if she couldn't see them.

It seemed to take forever for Sasuke to unlock the wooden door, as old as the lock appeared to be - like the rest of the building, the elements had turned the initial white into worn yellow, and some of the paint was chipped off around the hinges. Its foundation was spotted in places with what looked like globs of dried clay, which did not make her feel any better. Her hands shook with impatience; it was exceedingly difficult not to give into the urge to look backwards, and confirm that no, red eyes were not in fact boring into her neck with ill-disguised hunger. She breathed a sigh of relief when Sasuke finally got the door open, though her hands tightened around the knife in her belt, loosening the sharp blade from its sheathe, and Sasuke's deceptively casual gesture of reaching back to adjust his pack told her he was doing the same.

Sasuke took a cautious step forwards, and then another, into the darkness of the room. Sakura's senses told her that no-one hid inside, but it never hurt to be absolutely certain, and there was something tingly and heavy about the air in the room, so she stayed back; she fought best in open quarters. Tensely, she waited for a signal from Sasuke, or some discernable shifting in the quality of the shadows.

The lights blazed on to reveal the room was perfectly empty; Sasuke stood by the switch, his eyes fading back to their natural uninterrupted black. He had dropped his pack in one of the corners, and rather than the knife he'd palmed, now held a candle in one hand. Sakura eyed it as she scurried quickly in, shutting the door firmly behind her before she gave into the temptation to investigate more.

The moment the door shut, Sakura tilted her head towards the wall that separated them from the other suite of rooms in that block. Sasuke shrugged an 'I don't know', forming a quick series of hand gestures that lit the candle with a soft puff: he was probably going to check. The hiss of Sakura's knife sliding out of its sheathe was the only sound she made as she headed towards the adjoining sets of rooms (a bathroom with a tap that dribbled clear water, a bedroom with two beds and a wooden dresser), but her effort was wasted; they were both empty. Upon her return to the main room, she saw a hint of a smile on Sasuke's face that told her without words that they had no neighbours (either that, or he'd flamed them to death, but she hadn't heard any screams); she nodded to him.

"D'you think they'll bother us?" Sakura asked, slipping her knife back into its sheathe and nudging her bag beneath the table in one corner - blowing out Sasuke's candle, which he had set on it, just in case. "Or can I forego sealing the rooms? I want to sleep."

Sasuke hesitated, which was still a surprise despite the week they'd spent travelling together. "There's at least three of them," he said eventually, rummaging through his pack for ink. "At least one of them will probably want blood."

"You're allowed to say if you don't know something," Sakura said, a bit less dryly than she had intended, hands on hips. Grimacing, she ran a hand through her tangled pink hair, which could probably make the newly risen run with terror.

"Weren't you the one who said that liars go to Hell?" Sasuke answered, rising with ink, which he entered the bathroom to mix.

Sakura sighed. She was. She took the opportunity to examine the main room more closely. Unlike the bathroom and bedroom, both of which had nothing more than bare necessities, the main room was actually decorated - a bookcase leaning against one of the outer walls, a rug over the threadbare carpet that did not hide any secret passages, the heavy table, and various posters on the wall. She said, almost absentmindedly, "Liars go to Hell, and then they rise again as vampires."

Sasuke's voice drifted back from the bathroom, as low as ever, but unerringly clear despite the groaning tap. "It's the reason there are so many of them."

She couldn't help it: her mouth quivered with amusement. "You know, you'd think that that sort of resurrection would turn them into zombies."

"Zombies don't exist," Sasuke said.

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me you never thought about it before. Everyone did, ever since that day Naruto impersonated the teacher and told us to dress up in blood and face paint."

There was a short pause, during which Sakura listened more keenly than she'd ever admit - under torture less powerful than that really, really old purple dinosaur show Sai watched to learn about friendship and love and you and me, anyway - for his response.

"Hn." Typically uninformative. But at least he sounded vaguely amused at the memory.

Sakura stopped in front of a large spread that showed two maps: one of the world and one of the country, both rendered in psychedelic colours that went to waste outside the closets of edgy rock stars and the screensavers of your average office employee. "You'd think there would have been more protest from them, when the country lines changed."

"They would never expose themselves," Sasuke said, taking the unexpected change of subject in stride. "Vampires love their secrets just as much as Leaf does. Especially if those secrets keep them safe from being hunted down for revenge."

Of course. Sasuke could, in fact, be verbose, could be loyal to a cause if it had something to do with revenge. Her fists clenched by her sides. She made a conscious effort to relax them.

"Real secrets have a way of spreading," Sakura said, "of being known. And then what?"

"Then people kill them," Sasuke said harshly.

Sakura ran a finger across the map of the world, which was vastly different from the way it had looked when Sakura was born, a couple of years after the turn of the millennium. Her eye traced the road she'd taken in the past week: from (neon blue) Fjord, where she'd met Sasuke, into the plains that separated (scarlet) Ember, a city located near the centre of the country, and (glittery) Nephrite. Cities that hadn't existed twenty years ago, before World War Three. Her hand paused at Leaf's location. She muttered, "Like you did."

There was a beat, and something clattering into the shower. Sasuke's muffled voice drifted out from the bathroom, but he stopped before Sakura could work out what he was cursing.

"The Elders were much worse than vampires," Sasuke said, much harder. "And I didn't owe you the truth when you couldn't accept it."

"You say that as if you actually thought about it and tried."

Sasuke didn't answer that, but he did say, "Real secrets aren't always spread. People only believe what they want to."

Sakura wondered how he could say that with a straight face. "True. Mainly because they avoid everyone who could beat the truth into them."

"I don't need you to tell me to go back to Leaf," Sasuke said quietly, suddenly, emerging from the bathroom.

"I wasn't trying to-" Sakura stopped, because she had been digging up old memories, and that was the stupid, pathetic crux of the matter, buried beneath every sharp word she could throw in his direction. In the end, she just shook her head, accepted a brush from him, and began painting. They sealed the doorway and windows of the main room first, inking in tiny, neat characters Sakura had mastered solely in the name of procrastinating from physical work, working wordlessly side by side. Sakura went to do the bathroom, found that Sasuke had already finished while they were speaking, and re-sealed a spot close to the end, where his writing had wavered, as though his hand had trembled in surprise.

"We're as safe now as we can be. I'm calling it a night."

He nodded, hands stuffed into pockets and not quite looking at her. Sakura watched him for a moment; her words slipped out quietly, without any particular bite. "But you know, Sasuke, I wasn't the only one trying to change someone's mind, tonight."

She turned her back and walked away, because it might be a cold day in Hell when Sasuke achieved the emotional competence of a twelve-year-old midget, but he would still get there if she left him to think about it. And even if, to his eyes, it made her an idiot who couldn't keep from lashing out, that was all right; the strongest person she had ever known was an idiot sometimes - strongest even if he needed saving now and again, but especially now.

- : -

Despite the growing piles of evidence, most people believed in vampires the exact same way they believed in true love or the wisdom of tax evasion: only barely and depending on life experience even then, but with a certain clinging tenacity that kept the beliefs alive. It was one of the reasons Leaf had not fully mobilised to destroy them.

But the moment Sakura woke, even before she knew what exactly had pulled her out of dreamless sleep, she could feel the tingling in the air, and her first thought was, Vampire.

A bone-white face grinned down at her.

She rolled out of bed, already channelling power into her hands as her heart tried its very best to break her ribs. Her mouth opened in a silence scream. If she had been a closer to the window, she would have smashed right through and broken the seals, but her desperate lunge was cut short when fingers closed around her wrist, jarring her, making her lash out in desperation at the black-haired interloper-

"Sakura."

The room swam back into focus, as soft candlelight filtered into her vision.

It was like air had rushed suddenly back into the room; it was still heavy and tingling, like chakra hummed somewhere close, but she could breathe again. Her lungs filled, and she gasped, light-headed, legs like jelly and knees on the verge of wobbling as she realised what she had almost done.

"Sorry," she muttered, pulling her wrist out of his grip. She shook her pink hair impatiently out of her eyes. Then she got a good look at Sasuke's face, and the hairs at the back of her neck rose in time with another spike of her heart rate.

Slowly, she swivelled around, ready to face the vampire outside the window and whatever threats he promised.

Sakura had known that empty threats couldn't have painted that grim expression on Sasuke's face, but it still didn't prepare her.

Because the vampire's handiwork wasn't outside.

Painted in bold, dripping, bloody letters, right above her head: "STAY."

The blood froze in her veins, and the roaring in her ears drowned out every other sound in the world. But the vampire wasn't making any sound; he simply grinned in her direction in a decidedly unfriendly manner, as though they were sharing a dirty secret that was completely her fault. And turned and faded into the darkness, moonlight shining on his blond ponytail and - her gut clenched - his crimson and black cloak.

Her dresser exploded in his wake.

- : -

The pieces of shattered clay and bits of wood were swept into a corner. The lights were no longer working, but that wasn't much of a surprise, or much of a problem given what Sakura and Naruto had once referred to as Sasuke's undiagnosed pyromania. They checked the seals individually, under candle-light, after Sakura had pulled the splinters out of her back and healed the more significant wounds until they scabbed over.

"If there's nothing wrong he shouldn't have got in," Sakura said quietly, once they stood side by side in the main room, as safe as sitting ducks and on the verge of jumping at moving shadows.

Sasuke scowled. The pinwheels in his eyes were whirling madly as his gaze flicked everywhere, like he was following mosquitoes buzzing through the air. "They're not broken."

"We didn't sense him," Sakura said, staring him down, "so obviously he's able to hide from our powers."

"Tch." But he admitted, "They're not much use then."

With three steps, Sasuke crossed the room, stopping in front of the door. His hand twisted sharply on the door handle - sharply enough that the handle screeched in protest, screws twisting somewhere in the glinting metalwork. He grunted with effort, the exertion of his muscles visible, tugging so hard that the handle began to shake. The door did not budge.

"Sasuke," Sakura said, going to stand beside him, her reflection following her in the window.

He stood aside, watching, and there was even something of a faint smile on his face as she cracked her knuckles.

Her fist slammed hard into the wooden door with a resounding CRACK, chakra exploding out with natural ability honed by years of work. At the last moment, her face turned away to avoid the splinters shooting from the point of impact. The walls shook, groaning, and the ceiling rumbled ominously with internal strains. But it held. Worse -

She gasped as her chakra drained out of her fist, tugging at her reserves with speed that left her dizzy. She snatched back her hand, staring. "Did you see that?" she demanded, refraining with effort from cradling her hand like she was five years old again.

Sasuke nodded, eyes narrowed. "I could try fire."

"Or the door could suck your chakra away," Sakura retorted. "Or maybe we're just going to burn to death. We can use chakra, but we're not exactly invincible."

They weren't, whatever Naruto or Sasuke thought - or maybe the problem was that they weren't thinking, when they threw themselves into situations that lowered life expectancy so much, neither should have lived to see their fifteenth birthdays. They'd been born with a measure of chakra, and Leaf had taken them and honed all three with exercises ranging from trying to burn Kakashi's books (Sasuke), to defacing Sasuke's home for blaming the theft on him (Naruto), to clawing for the privilege of getting beaten to within an inch of her life (Sakura), but chakra only started to compensate for a vampire's physical superiority. They were still human, as fragile as trust; chakra was a powerful tool that could be used to briefly enhance strength and speed, and to cast certain spells, or jutsu, but not a miracle.

"You know we can't get out without the breaking their seal," Sakura warned, "and I for one have no idea where it is. We'll burn. I won't be able to heal that much quickly enough."

"Ten minutes," Sasuke allowed generously, after a moment. "I make no promises after that. No one," he said in a low voice, "is going to protect Madara. Not even his minions."

Akatsuki. Clay bombs. A stone plunged into the pit of her stomach and sank there beyond hope of retrieval as the air tingled.

- : -

Time passed, laden with the heavy sense of preparing uselessly for the inevitable.

The moon crawled painfully across the sky, blotting out the faint stars with reflected luminescence. Ever so slowly, the stars rotated around the North Pole; drawing seal symbols around her with ink, Sakura could have counted them all, and still have enough time on her hands to fall into the pits of a panic attack and claw her way back out, before the cycle began again. (And again and again.)

The moment she finished, she rested her back against a corner, listening to the loud, but fading, roar of flames as Sasuke fought for a way out. Her tools were scattered around her: jars of Holy water (an astonishingly rare commodity due to the difficulty of getting a blessing) and richly scented oils, silver-edged knives sharpened until they hummed, a rough wooden cross with one arm sharpened to a point. At least she didn't have to worry about the bulkiest component of her repertoire exploding if it caught on fire; Sasuke carried that on his back.

While she waited, she fiddled absentmindedly with her silver bracelet. It was a simple design, three slightly different strands of silver braided together, with crimson bloodstones fused where the strands crossed; simultaneously beautiful and practical, given the properties of its components. She had kept it tucked safely into one of her side-pockets for most of her trip with Sasuke; the memories it brought to the surface, of the last few nights her tight-knit group had been whole, made it too painful to wear regularly, but she hadn't been able to bear the thought of never seeing it again.

"Come on, come on," she muttered, fingernails tapping impatiently.

"Well, isn't this interesting?" If her heart kept skipping beats like this, she wouldn't need to wait for a vampire to finish her off. "Waiting for me?" The vampire emerged from the shadows. Up close, its smirk was no pleasanter than it had been earlier, when he was watching her through a glass pane. Fabric rolled in waves, crimson clouds distorting on his black robes. A chill rolled down Sakura's spine; she hadn't even sensed his presence.

Blond and - there was no other word for it - silky hair swaying with every step, the vampire reached towards her. His face was disturbingly handsome, though from his swaying gait, Sakura wondered if the vampire wouldn't have preferred to be described instead as 'pretty'; his fine features were the sort that convinced people on the streets he was female, and some groups refused to consider otherwise, even if he and his friends firmly referred to him as a man.

"Annoying kid," the vampire muttered, stopping short just in front of her seals. His hands settled on his hips - Sakura blinked - and he regarded her sceptically. "I don't know how you killed Sasori."

Sakura forced out a laugh, releasing her death grip - finger by finger - on her silver and bloodstone bracelet. "The same way I'll kill you, of course."

His smirk widened, his single properly functioning eye glinting. He seemed in no hurry to simply finish her off. "Kill me? You can't even leave the house." His arms rose and fell in a languid shrug, hands opening to reveal the twin mouths tattooed on his palms. "And no," he added, bending down until their eyes were level, "you are not leaving."

"Whatever you use," Sakura warned, "I can smash through it."

"As effective as punching a spike, yeah," the vampire agreed. "I know your strengths."

"And I know yours, Deidara," Sakura said calmly. She held his eyes for a moment, then directed his gaze to the floor with her own.

He shook his head, clucking his tongue. "A ring of Holy water? Beautiful. Fleeting," he added, scuffing the line of water, "and beautiful because of that, but useless. Did the Uchiha tell you that it would help?" He snorted inelegantly. "I'm not surprised. Itachi was a bastard, too." Old memories danced in his eyes.

Sakura glared. Then she simply threw her head back and laughed with abandon. "I trust him."

It was surprisingly, disturbingly, easy to say. What would Leaf think if they knew what she was doing?

Something must have alerted Deidara to the fact that something was wrong. Without warning, he flew across the seals and stopped maybe an inch away from her, reaching for her throat. Whatever degree of control it was that had allowed him to actually leave a source of blood in her room, it was gone now. Deidara jerked her up by the shoulders, jaw cracking and fangs lengthening.

Even as she flinched back as far as she could, Sakura caught the flicker of orange at the edge of her vision.

"Tell your partner to stop whatever it is he's doing," Deidara hissed, all semblance of normality vanished. Icy air rasped across the skin of her throat, making her shudder with revulsion. "Or you die." He shook her, hard, and if it were physically possibly, blood would be draining out of his face; Sakura just smiled. "What did you do with your chakra? What did you help him do!"

Despite the crick in her neck, Sakura didn't reply. Her eyes met Sasuke's, over Deidara's shoulder. His hands formed a rapid series of gestures, ending with flames flowing through his hooked finger - flames which licked at the outside of the house, for that was where Sasuke stood, out in the frigid darkness.

"I'll kill her!" Deidara shouted wildly, dropping her. He was a blur, pounding at the door one second, digging frantically at the floorboards in the next, but Sasuke had set a crude but temporarily effective seal around the perimeter. "No, I won't, I'll let her burn slowly -"

He stopped as Sakura's bracelet smashed into the wall in front of him, clattering hard onto the wooden floor, beneath curls of smoke. "Your Akatsuki took him." Every word she spat out was shaped with newfound understanding - the emotion she'd felt when she caught sight of his robes. "You were going to play with me instead of killing us, get back at me for Sasori. But I am not letting you out, even if I die here with you." Too slowly, Deidara turned, eye wide. "I'll settle for revenge as long as you burn."

Deidara rushed for her, possessed, maybe, with the frenetic need to make her suffer and choke along with him. He was not fast enough.

Sakura had already plunged one of her knives right into her heart.

- : -

_Spoilery warnings: character death_

**Well?**


	2. Chapter 2

_Warnings: medium-heavy violence. Also, spoilery warnings at the bottom._

* * *

><p><strong>Humanity, it's a Fragile Thing<strong>  
><em>By icecreamlova<em>  
><span>Part Two<span>

- : -

_Earlier..._

_Akatsuki. Clay bombs. A stone plunged into the pit of her stomach and sank there beyond hope of retrieval as the air tingled. The records she had carefully read danced in front of her eyes, and the words couldn't have been more attention-grabbing if each letter was a different colour and dressed in tutus, like the ballet dancers among the wealthy city-kids._

_"Sasuke..." she said slowly, "didn't one of the Akatsuki use clay bombs as a weapon?" When he looked questioningly in her direction, she nodded at the window, where the candle's bright flame was reflected hauntingly. The darkness pressed heavily. "The house's foundation. It's made of clay." That wasn't exactly accurate, but it was like saying the sea was made out of water: so close to the truth that it didn't matter. "That's why the air feels so strange."_

_Sasuke wasn't looking at her any longer. Rather, determination flittered across his face as he peered at the floor. "You're right. It's a thin layer and hard to see, but..."_

_"Down there?" Sakura asked, gesturing to the centre of the room. At Sasuke's nod, she began stripping off the rugs and tossing them aside. She marched to the centre of the room, concentrating._

_The wood cracked beneath the heel of her boot as she stomped through it with chakra-enhanced strength. The floor vibrated beneath her feet. She aimed one more time at the centre of the spider-web of cracked wood, and with a sound like thunder, the planks broke away to reveal the clay foundation._

_And the ink seals splashed onto it._

- : -

Sakura's eyes snapped open, the memory of fire still playing beneath her eyelids. Her lungs expanded too quickly; she coughed like Naruto had, when she set him the nastiest remedy she had ever come across.

Sasuke kneeled beside her, eyes fixed on the brightly blazing house he had so happily set alight. Their equipment - which he had evacuated, until only the shadow-illusions actually remained inside the house - lay scattered around him. The fire threw blood red light for at least fifty metres in every direction, splashed colour on his pale skin, and made the depths of his black irises gleam with... something. He offered her a glass of water; Sakura snatched it out of her hands, taking deep gulps.

"You... should have... warned me," she gasped, watching as the huge fire spat sparks into the slowly lightening sky; it was maybe an hour until dawn. "Shadow clone's... memories... so vivid..."

Sasuke looked surprised. "I thought you knew," he said slowly. "You spend enough time around the idiot."

Sakura's eyes slipped shut. She couldn't look at him (because everyone knew closing your eyes made problems vanish) as she mumbled, "I remember everything. Shadow clones don't have emotions, but I did."

She had known, clinically, what had shaped Sasuke's decisions - had roundly abused his common sense, had agonised about the way her suicidal pet hamster had better survival instinct than he did - but until the moment her eyes should have skittered away in fear, but instead fixed on Deidara's crimson and black robes... until then she hadn't really understood.

The absolute, inarguable necessity of revenge, for someone she wouldn't (couldn't) believe was dead yet. That rage, as hot as the results of Sasuke's undiagnosed pyromania, but as cold and hard, at its core, as the stares Naruto had received in Leaf. (Not the stares due to his incurable urge to paint pictures of Barney on the walls of Sai's home. The other, older, ones, from perfect strangers.) Was this how Sasuke had felt, his entire life?

Sakura couldn't imagine her mind ever bending along those paths, as naive as that was, considering the profession of most of the people she loved doomed them to death by murder. How could Sasuke stand it?

"The thirst for revenge?" Sasuke asked, almost wryly.

"Yes." Sakura's eyes opened again to meet his - watching her carefully. Her breath hitched; her heart, which had been slowly returning to a normal pace, sped up again, until it seemed so embarrassingly loud Sasuke had to hear it pounding too. "I've been spending too much time around you, Sasuke. You're rubbing off on me."

"I doubt it," Sasuke said dryly. "You didn't fight Deidara."

"I didn't, because it might have made him die faster," Sakura said. "And if he destroyed my clone, or found out that the holy water didn't actually exist, he would have left before you finished." A gasp of laughter slipped out unexpectedly. "To think I trusted you while I was unconscious from making the clone. You tried to destroy Leaf, you already left us once, and I still didn't believe you would leave me there."

Sasuke began to shift away. Sakura's hand darted out for his elbow. She pulled him back, even though the effort made leopard spots dance in her vision. Sakura was too tired for emotional restraint.

"Don't you move."

"You're too tired to hold on," he said casually, gaze falling to her hand, then climbing slowly up her body to meet hers again.

"Or maybe," Sakura said determinedly, jerking him closer until they were eye to eye, "I'm rubbing off on you too, because you've gone back to trying to make me understand you. Unless you've got a livejournal account you're not telling me about, that's not how you treat a casual ally. I'm not the only one holding on."

If Sasuke understood the reference to the pre-war website, he didn't show it. He didn't try to pull out of her grasp, even though it meant she could feel his soundless breaths brushing across her skin - and this time her shudder was not of revulsion.

"I don't need you to tell me to go back to Leaf."

"No, you don't," she said quietly. "Except for when you do."

Reaching up, his fingertips ghosted across the swell of her cheek, lightly, almost familiarly. Brushed across the line of her chin, pausing momentarily at the scar at its base. Her eyelids sank when he reached her throat, where her pulse jumped erratically, but she somehow knew that his were wide open - with confusion, maybe, or surprise, but watching, in between their mingled, ragged breaths, as though his life depended on it.

Heat rushed downwards, but it was just as she began dragging him even closer - just as he clumsily cupped the back of her neck - that a cold, unwelcome thought crashed into her brain and dragged her back to reality. "You said there were at least three vampires. Where are the others?"

He stilled, and there was a shift, a physical and emotional withdrawal. Sasuke tilted his head towards the parking. Only two of the four cars that had populated it, when they'd first pulled in, were still there. One of them had belonged to the receptionist.

"Sasuke," Sakura said quickly, clutching onto the welcome change of subject, "the recep -"

"He's dead," answered her partner. "Drained." The receptionist. She couldn't remember his face and she had never learnt his name. Even if the vampires would have found the motel and attacked anyway (they were safe only among the destroyed towns and ghost-like prairies), guilt rubbed at her heart, until it was tender and raw. Her fists clenched over her knee; a shudder ran through her. Sasuke's face was unreadable as he took every exposed emotion in, and added, "But your acting was good enough that Deidara's dead, as well."

"It was your lightning blade that destroyed the seal, once I'd found it," Sakura reminded him.

There was a beat of silence.

"We should leave," Sakura said, forcing aching muscles to move and push her up. She winced as she swung her heavy pack onto her back, turning purposely away from the fire. "There might still be more vampires around."

Sasuke nodded absently. They gathered their tools, sweeping it into Sasuke's bag and adding more to hers, until she was sure she would cave under its weight, like Naruto under the threat of no more ramen. Naruto...

Silently, the duo trudged past the neighbouring house. They were passing by reception when Sasuke stopped suddenly, eyes fixed on the corpse inside. "It moved."

"What?"

Her question was shouted at his back, as Sasuke raced towards reception. Cursing, Sakura followed, feet kicking up dust that shone faintly with firelight - blown by the wind up towards the sky, which was beginning to turn grey.

The moment Sakura entered the room, she knew there was something wrong - and not the man's corpse, either, which was lying on the counter, bloodless, eyes filled with the reflection of the faintly humming computer monitor. Wooden chairs lined one corner, and a board from which keys dangled was nailed next to a door leading to the rest of the building, but the room was otherwise empty.

"Sasuke?" she said.

There was no reply, except for the creak of the door as it swung loosely.

At this point, Sakura had stopped being surprised at the ways her night had paralleled a B-grade horror film. She took a step back, towards the entrance, fists clenched. Then she sighed, slipped out of her backpack, and brought out her least favourite but most powerful tool: her flame-thrower, straps and everything.

There was still no reply by the time she had prepared fully, and resignation was slowly being replaced by fear. What was Sasuke doing? What had he seen? The perpetual humming of the monitor offered no answer.

Once she was done, Sakura hopped over the counter. Carefully, she nudged the door; it opened to reveal a labyrinth, lit from above by dim, flickering light bulbs.

Sakura's mouth dropped open. "You have got to be kidding me! I don't have time for this!"

Unfortunately, her vision did not instantly waver and reform into a single large room.

Gritting her teeth, Sakura reminded herself that she couldn't set the entire thing on fire - Sasuke was still inside. Grimly, she promised herself that she would rest after everything was over, popped chakra boosters into her mouth, and walked down the path up until the first corner.

Without a word, Sakura drew her fist back, and sent it right through the screen. She walked on.

The second wall didn't offer any resistance; neither did the third. But at the fourth wall, just as she was about to punch, movement flashed at the corner of her vision. She spun around, flames streaming towards the figure... who simply batted the fire away with a flick of his hand.

Before she had time to move, there were hands at her armpit, lifting her up, and before she could blink, she was bodily crashing through the fifth wall.

Sakura twisted well as she could, but still landed awkwardly in a pile of rubble. Her vision swam. Distantly, she registered that her pack had fallen ten metres away, out of reach.

"This is so anticlimactic," she groaned.

"I agree," said her attacker. His face was masked, eyes like gold coins peeking out through the holes, and she was too tired to be surprised by his crimson and black robes. "But it hardly matters to me. I already have an Earth heart."

"Where's Sasuke?" she demanded.

"He's Uchiha Sasuke? Another fire affinity," he said. "Also useless. I suppose that makes you Haruno Sakura. Pity."

"Excuse me?"

"It's a waste to kill people if you're not paid for it. Although," he contemplated, "if I have the full set..."

Whatever that meant.

"You know," the vampire said, almost pityingly, attention returning to her, "both your friends put up more of a fight than this. The Uchiha tried to set me on fire." He laughed, as though it he'd said something witty. "The other one did better, at least, he managed to destroy three of my last hearts. Made him pay for that, of course -"

The other one.

Her head throbbed, blood trickling down the bridge of her nose.

The full set.

The full set.

Her. Sasuke. That meant...

Deidara was Sasori's partner, and Ino had gleaned from their prisoner's head that members of the Akatsuki weren't told more than they needed to know. Deidara hadn't known; this one did.

It was this member of the Akatsuki who had taken him.

Sakura didn't know how she could moved so quickly - she was only human - but she was on her feet and flying at him - Instinct leaving behind Mind in a cloud of dust and screeches of "bad idea!" She hurtled into him, knocking him off his feet and ending his monologue.

The vampire recovered quickly. He ripped her hands off his neck and flung her into another wall. Sakura tucked herself into a ball, spinning to land feet-first, but underestimated his strength. Her knees nearly collapsed, and she had to muffle a cry of pain as she dropped onto the ground.

There was new wariness in his stance, but Sakura barely even registered it.

"WHERE IS HE?"

"The Uchiha? You can't -"

"WHERE'S NARUTO?" she screamed, forcing herself up again, her knee healing with burning, acidic chakra.

She didn't give him time to answer. Her flame-thrower was useless, and she wasn't particularly good at casting, but even vampires couldn't stand a fist through their heart. She leapt for the floor in front of him. The vampire dodged, blurring in front of her eyes, and her punch shattered the ground uselessly, leaving it cracked and crumbled.

He simply laughed. "Stop that. I'm not paid as much, if the goods are damaged."

"Here's my offer you bastard!" This time her punch punctured one of the outer walls, letting in a beam of dim, grey, early morning daylight.

Even in the heat of the battle, it froze her when the light touched the vampire - and he didn't collapse into a pile of dust.

He...

(Ino was not going to believe this.)

He sparkled.

Sparkled, like his skin had been set with a layer of diamonds.

"What -"

"Thought it was a myth?" There was a smug grin in his voice. "You're not the only one."

Most vampires Turned into creatures of the night. The vast majority. But rumours floated around about how very, very, very few retained their chakra, and because of that, sparkled, instead. Until that moment, Sakura had thought the rumour was sourced from some author with an overactive imagination.

It changed nothing.

If anything, she was going to live, to ensure Leaf received confirmation of the rumours.

She went after him again, hounding his footsteps. The walls cracked and swayed under her fist, expanding their arena until it was almost rectangular, even as he grew visibly impatient

She couldn't pinpoint when, exactly, the battle changed, but at some point he lashed out and she was forced to begin dodging and running, calling on all of Tsunade's skill to help her.

Chakra rushing through her veins, she was almost succeeding. Then he attacked.

Stars burst in her vision as he grabbed hold of her arm and slammed her head-first into a pile of rubble.

Her head snapped to the side as he backhanded her so hard, she skipped across the corridor, finally sliding to a stop against the wall. Her cheek throbbed dully, and she was dimly aware of the horrible numbness in her left arm, which hung at an odd angle. Before she could move again, he was right in front of her, fist plunging down.

Sakura rolled desperately out of the way, feeling air whipping her painful cheek in a miniature sonic boom. She scrabbled onto her knees, grimacing through a mouthful of blood and trying desperately to crawl away even though one arm hung at an odd angle, but then a hand was on her neck, lifting her up, choking and kicking.

He turned her around to face him.

"'Where's Naruto?' Did you come all the way out here to find your friend?" he rasped, horribly, horribly amused.

She spat her mouthful of blood at his exposed eyes, sent chakra into her toes, and lashed out with her foot.

The floor slapping at her knocked her breath away, slapping against bruises and broken bones. Blood ran into her eyes; she brushed it quickly away. Through a haze of pain, Sakura watched the vampire wipe her blood off his mask.

Watched him break off the lower half of his mask.

Watched his fangs lengthen.

Felt teeth sinking into the flesh at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, and what felt like concentrated acid blazed through her veins.

She was screaming. She knew she was screaming, but somehow, she couldn't hear it. Her feet kicked uselessly in midair, and oh god the burning -

"Let her go!"

It couldn't be, she was hallucinating from pain -

The chattering of thousands of thousands of birds filled the air in nostalgic, welcome familiarity. Without warning, they were crashing through another set of walls, and the gentle, pink light just before sunrise stabbed her eyes.

She didn't want to move. She wanted to stay there and scream at the pain in her shoulder, at her double-vision, at the fading numbness of her arms. But Sasuke was facing a vampire, and even if she couldn't get up for herself, she could pull herself together for him.

When she could see again, she realised that Sasuke's bleeding side was the most interesting thing in her field of vision. Half of his shirt had been torn off, and his elbows were scraped raw. They were right outside the reception area - she could see her backpack, the jars of holy water cracking on the ground - and as her eyes wandered back to Sasuke, she saw he very still, focused only on her. Years-old bite marks glared vividly out of his neck; Sakura was so woozy from the blood loss, she was half-convinced that the moment she looked away, they would start pulsing.

"Did he feed you, Sakura?"

"What?" she murmured, watching his marks very, very intently.

"Did he force you to drink his blood?" a dangerous edge entering his voice.

"No," she said quickly, to herself as much as to him. "I'm still me."

He relaxed, minutely, attention shifting back to the vampire. Until that moment, Sakura had never imagined she would see Sasuke struggle to keep his jaw from hitting the floor, as he really looked at the vampire again. Beyond Sasuke, the vampire stood, sparkling, but worse for wear. One hand was clutched to his chest, crimson running between his fingers until it looked like he was holding his heart. It was the fact he was bleeding at all, that told Sakura how severe the injury was.

"You -" he seemed lost for words.

"Electricity beats earth," Sasuke said, recovering. His long shadow moved with him as he shifted, slightly. She could hear the smirk in his voice. "You only have one heart left."

The vampire considered this briefly. "True. But in the long run -"

And Sasuke was flying back in an arc, the vampire at his throat.

About to push herself up, Sakura caught sight of her backpack again. Electricity, earth... fire affinity was useless...

This was going to hurt.

The vampire didn't notice her scream as Sakura grabbed hold of her dislocated shoulder, gritted her teeth, and wretched it back into its socket. He didn't notice her heavy panting, her groaning, as she walked slowly, swaying, towards her supplies. He didn't notice her at all until she was beneath the elongated shadow of the reception building, kneeling by her pack, and that was when she felt hands lifting her by the back of her shirt. She gasped as her collar tightened painfully around her throat, veins feeling like they were on the verge of exploding.

"You know what the irony is?" the vampire asked her. He didn't wait for a response. "The friend you left Leaf to look for was back there the entire time, though I'm not sure where exactly in Leaf Madara's keeping him."

His grip shifted; Sakura gulped down air. She gasped out, "No... that's not... the irony."

He turned her around, easily catching the slow fist she sent at him. "Did you think -"

His expression changed.

The vampire looked down at the stake punching through his ribcage, stabbing his heart. Before her eyes, the sparkle of his skin dimmed, began to fade away.

"Water beats fire," Sakura said softly. "Especially a stake dipped in holy water."

Dim points of light hovered in the air, where he had stood. With nothing left holding her up, she collapsed onto a pile of dust.

- : -

It was a very, very long time before they could move again. Longer before they made it back to Sasuke's car. Sasuke sat in the driver's seat, though 'sat' was maybe a generous term; he was in slightly better condition than she was, but the deciding moment had been when Sakura asked him, "How are you holding up fifteen fingers?" The sharp smell of antiseptic lingered, mixing with the herbal scent of her most potent creams.

"Looks like we're going back to Leaf," Sakura said, eyes closed, wincing as dull throbbing everywhere clamoured for attention, now that her adrenaline rush was fading away. She would sleep for a day after this for multiple reasons; for now, her chakra glowed softly, easing her concussion.

There was a moment's silence.

Then, after Sasuke ignited the engine:

"I suppose there could be worse places."

Their eyes met. Sakura could see, in his, the memory of the stake buried in the vampire's heart, juxtaposed over how her hand touched his now, as lightly as a butterfly's wings. She wondered what it was that he found, when he stared past the window of her eyes.

His warm fingertips touched hers, as an edge of brilliant sun burst beyond the edge of the world, throwing off rays of warm gold. Even the old, rusted skeletons in the distance seemed less threatening, rimmed with a soft, glowing halo. With barely a bump, they left the parking lot and the rest of the cars - which had, mysteriously, been set on fire.

Prairie grass rushed past. They drove steadily towards the distant horizon.

- : -

_Spoilery warnings: sparkly vampires, character death_

**Well?**


End file.
